Zoom has announced a significant AI-powered update of its new platform, Zoom Workplace, with capabilities to enhance productivity and collaboration.

AI Companion, Zoom’s Gen AI assistant available in Workplace, can now draft quick replies in Team Chat and offer organisations enhanced customisation and personalisation options. Since its launch in September 2023, over 700,000 accounts have enabled AI Companion, as Zoom confirmed in its most recent earnings call earlier this month.

Account owners and admin-approved users can download Zoom Workplace from the Zoom website to access the latest features and capabilities.

New Communications-Boosting Capabilities

Several of the most pivotal new enhancements focus on streamlining communications, such as “quick reply for mobile”. AI Companion can now suggest short contextual replies in Team Chat on mobile devices, helping users stay connected and aligned with their teams while on the move. For example, quick replies can offer suggested responses based on the context of the conversation thread.

Another new comms feature is “custom AI Companion notice”. When an AI Companion feature is first enabled in a meeting, a notice is provided to attendees, informing them of the activation.

A new feature within the admin portal now allows enterprise customers to customise this notice, including their text, formatting, and hyperlinks. This capability enables organisations to tailor the Zoom experience to their needs, such as adding branding or sharing information about their policies when interacting with external audiences.

Lastly, on the communications front are enhancements to external collaboration. New external collaboration settings and a dashboard in Team Chat offer admins expanded control and visibility over external users.

These settings, available at both the account and external company/account levels, regulate external communications in group chats and channels. For example, admins can enable approvals for adding external users at the account level but disable them for specific partner companies. Additionally, admins can access the External Connections dashboard to oversee all external connections within their account, streamlining communication processes. Zoom says these features will be available soon.

More Details On Productivity-Enhancing Features

To help relieve workers and leaders of tedious tasks such as sharing notes, project status updates, and action items with colleagues, AI Companion has been upgraded with several new features, the first of which is global search.

Global search synthesises information and resources across Zoom Workplace to help users find information more effectively. Users can use global search to look for data, documents, and more across various sources, including meeting recordings, SMS messages, files in Zoom Team Chat messages, channels, contact names, Zoom Notes, Zoom Whiteboards, Zoom Events Webinars, and Shared Spaces. This capability will be available in June.

Another new productivity feature is tailored specifically for education. AI Companion for Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) will enable educators hosting classes over Zoom to find, review, and share meeting summaries with their students straightforwardly. This capability will also be available in June.

What About Employee Engagement and Workplace Management?

Zoom is also expanding the integration between Zoom and the employee engagement platform Workvivo.

Workvivo customers can now rapidly distribute critical company news to employees and clients across multiple locations through a new Zoom Rooms integration. This integration lets users instantly broadcast essential updates, news, and events using Workvivo TV on Zoom Rooms digital signage.

To help workers optimise in-person time, Workplace users can now pair a Zoom Rooms for Touch device with a Zoom Room, utilising additional inputs such as the camera from the companion device for enhanced functionality. This allows the use of multiple screens and cameras from other companion devices, helping teams optimise different spaces for hybrid meetings.

What Has Zoom Been Up To Recently?

Last week, Zoom reported its Q1 FY25 earnings. Its operational milestones included surpassing two million Zoom Rooms licenses.

In Zoom’s latest earnings call, the company reported that the launch of its AI-powered unified platform, Workplace, significantly contributed to the success of several Zoom products, including Zoom Rooms. The company reported a three percent year-over-year revenue growth, surpassing the guidance for the quarter.

Zoom celebrated several operational milestones, including reaching a notable number of Zoom Rooms licenses, having five customers with 100,000 or more Zoom Phone seats, and activating 700,000 AI Companion licenses since its introduction eight months ago.

In other Zoom news, the vendor revealed it is introducing post-quantum end-to-end encryption to Zoom Meetings within its Workplace platform.

While end-to-end encryption has been available in Zoom meetings since 2020, the addition of post-quantum E2E encryption provides an extra layer of security against increasingly sophisticated threats. Zoom claims to be the first UCaaS company to offer a post-quantum E2EE solution for video conferencing.

Currently available only for Zoom Meetings, post-quantum E2E encryption will be extended to Zoom Phone and Zoom Rooms “soon.”



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